The acceptance speech by Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender woman who most of us first came to know as Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner, will be remembered for what she taught us about being different.

For the descendants of former slaves, who had had the rare good fortune to remain an intact community from the time before freedom came to the early years of the 21st century, family closeness can be a celebration in itself.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s final words of his opinion will likely be quoted in many weddings going forward: “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.” Those last words are a mic-drop declaration that the matter is settled, in every state of the Union.

I loved my own mom, and consciously took on lots of her characteristics, too. But borrowing mothers who were different from her, whom I didn’t have to defend against their own choices and sadness, enriches my life to no end.

Grow up without a camera, and your eyes—and ears, nose, and sense of taste and touch—record what’s imperative to save. I’m grateful for the secret album in my mind, its images sharp and bright, miraculously impervious to the blight of memory loss that robs of me of names and birth dates.

After his massive stroke, my father sat in his wheelchair, frantically scribbling in a notebook. Utterly frustrated, he scratched out on crumpled, stained paper: I USED TO BE O.K. . . . I AM A RETIRED ARCHITECT. Witnessing this encounter, I felt ineffable heartbreak

In this week’s Wednesday Five we share with you five iconic films featuring fathers of the big screen. Gather the family together for these beautiful stories about fatherhood and strong father figures whose children are at the center of their lives.

My father, Harold Elleson, had all the virtues expected of a husband and father in Minnesota in the 1940s: he was loving, steadfast, dependable, faithful. His was a hard-luck life, and, like Minnesota fathers back then, he shouldered his burdens without complaint.

When I introduced “The Partridge Family” and “The Brady Bunch” to my millennial daughter several years ago, it was “The Brady Bunch” that stuck. After 40 years, “The Partridge Family” just didn’t hold up.